


Puncture

by tiredeuropean



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: (of a sort), Endeavour Morse Whump, Endeavour Morse: Disaster Magnet, Fluff and Humor, Forehead Kisses, Hair Brushing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Max DeBryn is a badass motherfucker, Milo (c'est moi) is a sappy twit, Minor Surgical Procedure, Scenes of a Medical Nature, punctured lung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 09:25:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19742815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiredeuropean/pseuds/tiredeuropean
Summary: "What's wrong with the boy?" Thursday barked, brows furrowed in agitation as Max dropped to his knees beside Morse and began carefully feeling along the younger man's ribcage."My lack of X-ray vision notwithstanding, I'm pretty sure Morse has himself a rather badly punctured lung. Would you please do the honours and call for an ambulance?"





	Puncture

**Author's Note:**

> ITV Endeavour has grabbed me by the spleen at this point. Apologies to everyone reading this, I'm a biomedical sciences student and couldn't resist the temptation to break Morse's ribs. 
> 
> This story contains scenes of a medical nature, and distress.
> 
> I'm kicking about on Tumblr! come say hello, I'm @oh-horatio

The bat lay disregarded on the cobbled street in Oxford, as three police officers wrestled the Balliol Bludgeoner, as the papers had come to call him, into a waiting police car. Max couldn't quite believe that such an incongruous piece of wood had been used to bring three people to such a brutal end. There was still a spatter of blood near the handle. It had probably soaked through into the grain of the wood. No amount of sanding would work the mark of violence from the weapon.

Max thought back to the concave head of the elderly professor, the jellied grey matter that had oozed from his head as Max had watched him be lifted onto a trolley to be put in an ambulance, the wide open milky eyes with a remnant of cold fear forever frozen in them and felt the beginnings of a simmer of rage deep in his gut. The ambulance that contained the old man's body waited for him, engine growling impatiently, but he couldn't quite stomach sitting in the back of an ambulance with a dead body only to have to place the poor old man on a cold metal slab and dissect him like a slab of beef.

Still, decomposition waited for no-one. The sooner they got the old fellow into one of the morgue's refrigerators, the better.

Morse, still panting heavily after giving chase to the killer, half-jogged over to the ambulance. His eyes flicked to the covered corpse, face paling as he caught sight of the spot of blood on the white sheeting.

"How long for the results?" He gasped; head thrown back to examine the fluffy clouds floating across the sky. 

Max blinked owlishly over the top of his glasses, tearing his eyes from the graceful line of Morse's neck. "Given that Professor Aldberry's head being turned into a _raspberry compote_ with a bat-" Morse winced at the gruesome description "-all I have to do is check that our professor wasn't suffering with anything else that would have sent him shuffling off the mortal coil and confirm death by repeated blunt force trauma. I'll be in the station at around two this afternoon."

"Alright. I'll meet you then."

With a cursory nod, Max climbed up into the back of the elevator, peeling off the white examination gloves as he did so and slotting them back into his case with practiced ease. When he looked at the younger man, he was staring somewhere off at the top of the ambulance with steely determination. He was still panting, Max noted with a frown. Perhaps the young upstart wasn't as fit as he'd assumed.

"Two in the afternoon it is."

the doors to the ambulance were shut, and Max began the long, somber drive to the hospital morgue.

* * *

Max couldn't help but wonder which metaphysical entity he'd managed to piss off. Whoever or whatever it was, They (or It) must have had a particularly sadistic sense of humor, because the moment Max stepped foot into the police station's office space, Morse collapsed from his chair. 

For a moment, there was a suspended silence, followed by utter chaos.

People were on their feet talking, someone was shouting, and a hushed pandemonium that would only ever be found in the British during times of panic ruled. Max sighed, half handed, half shoved the autopsy report into Jim Strange's hands, and strode over to the prone Morse, carefully rolling him onto his back.

People were crowding in, and Max had to fight against the surge of irritation as he dropped to his knees.

"If you would all be so kind as to please step back and be quiet." The doctor snapped. The cool command in his voice sent officers stumbling three paces back, falling silent.

Morse was conscious, which was a minor blessing, but the panic in his eyes and the greyish tinge to his face wasn't at all encouraging. Max set two fingers to the fluttering carotid artery in Morse's neck. Blood beat a frenzied tempo against Max's fingers, and the younger man's breath came shallow.

Max remembered the way the young man had been panting, and a lightbulb flickered on inside his head. He deftly unbuttoned Morse's shirt, steadfastly refusing to linger on the freckles on the man's collarbone, and oh so gently began feeling along the man's ribs. when he got to the third rib, Morse arched away from him, face a tableau of agony. Max murmured an apology, buttoning the man's shirt again.

"What's wrong with the boy?" Thursday barked, brows furrowed in agitation as Max looked up at the man with no small amount of exasperation. 

"My lack of X-ray vision notwithstanding, I'm pretty sure Morse has himself a rather badly punctured lung. Would you do the honours and call for an ambulance?"

Thursday turned on his heel and headed for the phone on his desk, barking commands as he went. The huddle of officers dissipated, leaving Max kneeling besides a frightened Morse who was fighting to breathe and needed consolation. Not for the first time, Max wished he had a better bedside manner. Then again, when the majority of your patients were dead, you didn't really need a vocabulary of pleasantries. 

"Morse, it looks to me as though you've got a pnuemothorax. Your rib has broken and punctured your lung, and your pleural cavity has filled with air. Did the Bludgeoner get you with his bat?"

Morse nodded wordlessly, blue eyes vivid with terror.

"I know that you're in a lot of pain, but I promise you that this is a treatable injury. You're going to be sore for a while, but you're in good hands."

Morse's eyes went to the doctor's hands, and then met the doctor's. He nodded again. His eyes were still terrified, but there was something else in them, a steely kind of determination. Max almost reeled backwards with the revelation. It was _trust_ in Morse's eyes. Morse was trusting him, in his abilities as a physician.

"Ambulance is on it's way." Fred informed them. Max nodded numbly, confused and more than a little humbled in Morse's faith in him.

"See? You'll be right as rain, soon."

As Morse was stretchered away, he locked eyes with Max, who was stood in the back of the crowd of officers, and nodded once, the same steely conviction in his eyes. Max nodded in return, pluckec the autopsy report from Jim's hands, and headed into Bright's office, more than a little bemused.

He didn't go to see Morse until two days after the whole incident happened, after two of the patients on ward unexpectedly died from what would turn out to be a particularly stubborn strain of E. coli and required investigation by autopsy. He'd taken one of his cushions and a bottle of Glenfiddich with him up to Morse's ward, where a tired doctor, far too familiar with the Morse's episodes of blatant idiocy, recognised him,merely waving him through. Morse had a length of plastic tubing in his side and looked thoroughly displeased at this, dropping the tubing guiltily when hie caught sight of Max's raised eyebrow.

"I hope you're not planning on pulling that out. They'll put the 12 gage hollow needle in between your ribs otherwise."

Morse went rather green at that. Max quirked a small smile.

"These are for you." He pulled out the cushion and the Glenfiddich. The whisky was received well, but the cushion got him a confused look. 

"It'll hurt like the blazes when you cough for the next six weeks. Holding a cushion to your side makes it hurt less." 

Appreciation dawned on Morse's face. "Thank you, DeBryn."

"Don't mention it. Oh, and Morse? The next time you get your ribs battered, do make sure to mention it posthaste."

Morse's laugh burned brightly in Max's ears long after he'd left the hospital ward.


End file.
